After Promontory
150 Years of Transcontinental Railroading

Exhibit Dates: November 1 – April 25

AHC’s exhibit, After Promontory: 150 Years of Transcontinental Railroading, is a traveling photography show about how the transcontinental railroads profoundly reshaped the human geography of the West. On May 10, 1869, two railroads joined in a lonely desert of northern Utah, at a place called Promontory with celebration by dignitaries from both companies–the Central Pacific, which had built from California, and the Union Pacific, which had built from the east. The exhibit shows the impact the railroads have had on the landscape with photographs by some of the most ac­complished photographers in the nation’s history, artists such as William Henry Jackson, Timothy H. O’Sullivan, and Car­leton E. Watkins.

East Portland: A Changing Landscape, a Forgotten City

Exhibit Date: November 1-April 25

The AHC curated a complementary exhibit to After Promontory called East Portland: A Changing Landscape, a Forgotten City.  This original AHC exhibition on the historic city of East Portland focuses on the period from the 1840s to the 1910s and explores the people who lived there, the impact of the arrival of the railroad and industry, and the changing landscape that in the course of only a few decades turned a flood zone into a thriving city.